Road to Romance - Neon Nights

By Alex White

- 9 minutes read - 1852 words
A detailed write up of a sci-fi thriller romance.

This is one of four stories which were being told simultaneously by a game group. The other stories will be added here as they are released. These are transcripts of live sessions, and not carefully plotted short stories, so please don't expect them to be polished!

Safety Discussion

We wanted to test the boundaries of what we were comfortable with, and so elected to aim for sensual/steamy romances. We did a lot of check-in during the game to make sure that everyone was comfortable with where we were going.

“Neon Nights”

This is an enemies to lovers thriller in a science-fiction setting.

  • Protagonist: William, an android replicant nearing his end date. Insecure, wants healing, Played by Alex
  • Paramour: Sonya, a blade runner. Mysterious Depths. Played by Josh.
  • Trouble: Running out of time. Played by Cris.

Introduction

It is River City in a poor area of town. The rain is pouring down outside. And the neon lights are flickering. Eternal dark and rain. And William's sitting there and he's looking at his hand. At first glance he looks young and fit, but the skin is kind of starting to peel by his fingers. It's kind of a bit gray. And he's thinking

“I don't know how much longer I've got. I don't know when my clock runs out, but my fingers weren't peeling before. Can I make a difference? Can there be... “

He pauses.

“There must be more to life than what they had me doing out on the ships. Maybe I can find somebody here who can make a difference for me?”

That's the opening scene to give an idea of him. You can see his insecurity, he's looking for healing. And time's running out.

Encounter

We are in a nightclub. The music is extremely loud, the beat pulsating and the lights are flashing from literally everywhere in the room. William is here, standing against the wall and watching everything. The life, the energy in all the people here.

And Sonia walks into the club. She is magnificent. Every time someone comes in some spotlights automatically turn and focus on the person entering and we can see the trench coat slick with rain, collar turned up. Bulky, there could be anything under there. Not dressed for the nightclub atmosphere at all. She hides her eyes for a moment from the glare. Despite this, she is absolutely glorious.

She walks in, scanning the room carefully, looking for something or someone. Spots William and heads over towards him. She leans on the wall next to him and says “Are you going to be here long?”

“Longer than I thought” he says “I don’t want there to be a scene”

“Well, we could get out of here…”

“I kind of feel quite safe here at the moment” he replies. He glances down, he glances up, and then looks down kind of in a more lingering way. “You’re not quite what I was expecting….”

Sonya is not used to this. She gets a lot of attention, but not from targets. They are normally already running. But this is kind of interesting, and she flushes a little. She stands a little bit awkwardly to try to absorb that information.

“Well, we're here. shall we get a drink?”

“Sure. And maybe a dance?” He replies

“Sure”

They are being really guarded. Neither wants to talk about the real issue, the elephant in the room. But the music slows, and they dance carefully, cautiously. If you were looking it might put you in mind of a male spider coming to mate with a female spider, but aware that any wrong move might be the end of him.

William is thinking “I don’t know what it is about her… but I really like her. I know she is probably sent here to kill me, but I really like her. Am I imagining it, or was there something in her eye other than that killer glint?” He is probably fooling himself, but there is some faint hope here. The dance goes on.

Complication

The night club went better than William expected. Sonya didn’t just shoot him outright, and for reasons not entirely clear to Sonya, she let William go that night.

William gets a letter. Completely anonymous, no idea where it has come from. Inside is a little origami crane, and a short note. It says this:

“You have less time than you think, experimental model.”

William crumples the paper. Then he opens it up again, reads it once more, then rips it in half.

“It’s not fair. I thought I had at least a year left. Maybe more”.

He slumps in his chair, distraught.

First Kiss

We see Sonia and William on a rooftop, the city stretching out beyond them. The rain is pouring down and cascading off them. Neon lights up the surrounding city, and reflects off the puddles around them. She is wearing her long trench coat again, and he is in jeans and a white t-shirt, which is clinging to his body in the rain. It shows the outlines of William’s muscles very clearly.

It’s several weeks on from their first meeting and they have seen each other a number of times, mostly in crowded places. Here in the rain they are alone. William slowly reaches out and touches Sonia’s hand.

“We’ve been dancing around this for a while now” he says. “We know our lives, we were never supposed to meet this way… if you were doing your job I’d have been retired by now”

He pauses for a while, then continues “I don’t know what it is that stayed your hand that first night that you saw me. But in the two years that I’ve been alive I’ve never known anything like the happiness of these last few weeks… I’ve never known a dance. I’ve never known laughter. I’ve never felt arms around my shoulders”

She nods.

William continues “I thought my life was short and brutal and that was all there was to it. I never dreamed…”

Sonia puts a finger on his lips. “I fell for a replicant once before, and I was forced to do my duty. I won’t do it again. By which I mean I intend to not do my duty”

William grasps her hand urgently “But what will they do to you?”

“I don’t care” she replies. And she undoes her trench coat and slips it off. She was wearing nothing beneath it.

William takes her in his arms and traces her shoulders and down her back. Rain is spraying off his hands, spraying down the body, strobing in the flickering neon lights. He starts to take off his clothes and she helps, and together they make passionate love in the thundering rain.

Catastrophe

We see a scene in a police captain’s office. Sonia’s superior. He is talking to another blade runner. He drops a folder onto the desk, with William’s name clearly on it. “OK Daniel. Sonia has become a problem” he growls. “Read this and deal with it”.

We see a dingy room in a decaying tenement building. The rain lashes against the window, and neon competes with lightning as it thunders outside. William is sitting on the bed and his skin is peeling badly on his arms and face now. The harsh lighting shows up the new wrinkles in his face and the looser skin on his arms — he looks quite elderly now.

The door is kicked open, and the new blade runner Daniel bursts in.

Sonia snatches up her pistol, and says “Daniel, what are you doing here?”

“Your time has run out” he says blankly. “You have not done your job here. The department has no use for blade runners that do not do their job. You must be removed”.

He turns his gun towards William. “But first…”

Comeuppance

Sonia shoves William out of the way and fires at Daniel - there is a dramatic gun battle with slow motion tracers going through pillows, the window getting blown out, bullets flying everywhere. One of the bullets hits the light fitting in the ceiling and it starts flickering madly, giving a strobe effect to the battle.

William is so unsteady he can’t contribute anything to the fight and watches helplessly as the Lino floor becomes slick with rain coming through the shattered window. In slow motion he watches Daniel’s pistol come round towards him again, and he can see the glowing rim of the muzzle.

Sonia launches herself across the floor and slides between Daniel’s legs and then nails him in the back of the head. Daniel collapses to his knees, then topples forward onto the floor in front of William.

There is a dramatic exit where they gather up their things and flee the scene.

As they are on an empty tube carriage, William brings out the crumpled letter he’d got, and passes it across to Sonia. “I really don’t know how much time I’ve got. I really think it is running out”

“It just says that you’re experimental” Sonia replies. “I’ve got a lot of contracts in underground research, and the fact that you’re experimental… maybe there is a switch we can flip?”

He shrugs, and leans tiredly against her shoulder. She ruffles his hair a little, and looks pensive.

Happily Ever After

We have two scenes here. The first one is at an unlicensed underground hospital. Sonia is helping William to limp in, and he’s clearly not doing well. She says to the doctor “I’m calling in that favour. What can you do?”

The doctor replies “It’s a replicant, and its time is up. I don’t think there is anything I can do”

She hands over the letter though, and the doctor says “Oh, that’s interesting” He goes to look up some references in his terminal and then turns back to her “I think there might be something I can reset…”

We cut to a scene outside the city. There is a little log cabin in a woodland clearing. The sun is shining. William and Sonia are sitting on a bench outside, enjoying the sun and drinking something steaming hot.

William says “I don’t know how you did this. For six months we have been here. Built this cabin. Built a new life. Out of the city, out of everything”

He continues “When I saw you come into that nightclub, I thought my life was going to end. Weirdly my own life has kind of ended. I don’t know how much time I’ve actually got left but I guess… whoever knows really?”

Sonya leans on William's shoulder and they're drinking together and looking out over the lake with the various little things flying by. And she says “You know, this is our time. That nightclub was the best choice I made in forever”

“I agree” he says quietly

And they snuggled up together. And who knows how long they have?

But for now, they have happy ever after for as long as it happens to be.